View source for Ozawa v. United States

{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2023}}
{{Infobox SCOTUS case
  |Litigants=Takao Ozawa v. United States
  |ArgueDateA=October 3
  |ArgueDateB=4
  |ArgueYear=1922
  |DecideDate=November 13
  |DecideYear=1922
  |FullName=Takao Ozawa v. United States
  |USVol=260
  |USPage=178
  |ParallelCitations=43 S. Ct. 65; 67 [[L. Ed.]] 199; 1922 [[U.S. LEXIS]] 2357
  |Prior=
  |Subsequent=
  |Holding=Ozawa was racially "ineligible for citizenship" as he did not qualify as belonging to the Caucasian race.
  |Majority=Sutherland
  |JoinMajority=''unanimous''
  |LawsApplied=
}}
'''''Takao Ozawa v. United States''''', 260 U.S. 178 (1922), was a US legal proceeding. The [[Supreme Court of the United States|United States Supreme Court]] found Takao Ozawa, a [[Japanese Americans|Japanese American]] who was born in Japan but had lived in the United States for 20 years, ineligible for [[naturalization]].<ref>{{ussc|name=Ozawa v. the United States|260|178|1922}}.</ref> In 1914, Ozawa filed for United States citizenship under the [[Naturalization Act of 1906]]. This act allowed only "free white persons" and "persons of African nativity or persons of African descent" to naturalize. Ozawa claimed that Japanese people should be properly classified as "free white persons".

== Background ==
{{Background}}

Takao Ozawa was born on June 15, 1875, in [[Kanagawa Prefecture|Kanagawa]], [[Japan]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Ozawa v. United States {{!}} Densho Encyclopedia|url=https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Ozawa_v._United_States/#:~:text=Ozawa%20was%20born%20in%20Kanagawa,to%20Honolulu%20and%20settled%20down.|access-date=2021-05-01|website=encyclopedia.densho.org}}</ref> In 1894, he moved to [[San Francisco, California]], where he attended school. After he graduated from [[Berkeley High School (California)|Berkeley High School]], Ozawa attended the [[University of California]]. In 1906, after graduating, he moved to [[Honolulu]], [[Hawaii]]. After settling down in Honolulu, Ozawa learned [[English language|English]] fluently, practiced [[Christianity]], and obtained a job at an American company.<ref name=":0" /> While in Hawaii, he married a Japanese woman, who also studied in the U.S., and had two children. In his legal brief, Ozawa wrote of his personal identity, “In name, General Benedict Arnold was an American, but at heart he was a traitor. In name, I am not an American, but at heart I am a true American.”<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Ichioka |first=Yuri |date=1977 |title=The Early Japanese Immigrant Quest for Citizenship: The Background of the 1922 Ozawa Case |journal=Amerasia Journal |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=11}}</ref> He reported his background as purposeful attempts toward assimilation, writing: {{Blockquote
|text=(1) I did not report my name, my marriage, or the names of my children to the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu; notwithstanding all Japanese subjects are re- quested to do so. These matters were reported to the American government. I do not have any connection with any Japanese churches or schools, or any Japanese organizations here or elsewhere. (3) I am sending my children to an American church and American school in place of a Japanese one. (4) Most of the time I use the American (English) language at home, so that my children cannot speak the Japanese language. (5) I educated myself in American schools for nearly eleven years by supporting myself. (6) I have lived continuously within the United States for over twenty-eight years. (7) I chose as my wife one educated in American schools . . . instead of one educated in Japan. (8) I have steadily prepared to return the kindness which our Uncle Sam has extended me . . . so it is my honest hope to do something good to the United States before I bid a farewell to this world.<ref name=":4" />}} 

On October 16, 1914, Takao Ozawa decided to apply for citizenship after living in America for 20 years. Ozawa tried to petition under the naturalization law, but was rejected. He continued to take his case to the U.S. District Court in Hawai'i, who again disqualified his application as someone of the “Japanese race.<ref name=":02">{{Cite web |title=Ozawa v. United States {{!}} Densho Encyclopedia |url=https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Ozawa_v._United_States/#:~:text=Ozawa%20was%20born%20in%20Kanagawa,to%20Honolulu%20and%20settled%20down. |access-date=2021-05-01 |website=encyclopedia.densho.org}}</ref> In May 1917, Ozawa’s appeal was passed from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to the U.S. Supreme Court.<ref name=":02" /> The immigrant civic association, Pacific Coast Japanese Association Deliberation Council, hired former U.S. Attorney General [[George W. Wickersham]] to be Ozawa's chief counsel in front of the Supreme Court.<ref name=":02" />

By the time Ozawa's case made it to the Supreme Court he had been living in America for 28 years.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |last=Yeatman |first=Nicole W. C. |date=2022-11-14 |title=The Hill: The Supreme Court failed Asian Americans a century ago. What will it do now? |url=https://pacificlegal.org/the-hill-the-supreme-court-failed-asian-americans-a-century-ago-what-will-it-do-now/ |access-date=2024-05-06 |website=Pacific Legal Foundation |language=en-US}}</ref>

== Argument ==
In his brief to the court, Ozawa argued for his case on the basis of his good character. Ozawa notably wrote in his brief that "The color of skin is controlled by climate", further arguing that an individual's race should not be a determining factor in their worth as a person and ultimately his worth as a citizen of The United States.<ref name=":3" /> An excerpt from one of Ozawa's legal briefs reads as follows: "I neither drink liquor of any kind, nor smoke, nor play cards, nor gamble, nor associate with any improper person. My honesty and my industriousness are well known among my Japanese and American acquaintances and friends; and I am always trying my best to conduct myself according to the Golden Rule."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Teel |first=Steven C. |date=1998 |title=Lessons on Judicial Interpretation: How Immigrants Takao Ozawa and Yick Wo Searched the Courts for a Place in America |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25163253 |journal=OAH Magazine of History |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=41–49 |doi=10.1093/maghis/13.1.41 |jstor=25163253 |issn=0882-228X}}</ref>

==The courts' reaction==
Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice [[George Sutherland]] approved a line that lower court cases held, stating that "the words 'white person was only to indicate a person of what is popularly known as the [[Caucasian race]].'" The courts stated that the Japanese were not considered as "free white persons" within the meaning of the law. Justice Sutherland wrote that the lower courts' conclusion that the Japanese were not "free white persons" for purposes of naturalization had "become so well established by judicial and executive concurrence and legislative acquiescence that we should not at this late day feel at liberty to disturb it, in the absence of reasons far more cogent than any that have been suggested." Justice Sutherland also wrote in the court's opinion that the court was not making "any suggestion of individual unworthiness or racial inferiority."<ref name=":3" /> The Court declined to review the ethnological authorities relied on by the lower courts to support their conclusion or those advanced by the parties.

Ozawa's case was one of several contradictory rulings on race and citizenship during this period.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ito |first=Emma |date=2021-05-19 |title=Whiteness on Trial: Asian Americans and the Right to Citizenship - The UncommonWealth |url=https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/blog/2021/05/19/whiteness-on-trial-asian-americans-and-the-right-to-citizenship/,%20https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/blog/2021/05/19/whiteness-on-trial-asian-americans-and-the-right-to-citizenship/ |access-date=2024-05-06 |language=en-US}}</ref> Three months after Ozawa's case was heard by the Supreme Court, the court completely altered their own reasoning during the case of ''[[United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind]]''. Thind was an Indian man from the northern region of [[Punjab]] who moved to the United States when he was young, having even joined the [[U.S. Army]] during [[World War I]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Racial Identity and American Citizenship in the Court {{!}} lesson plan curriculum {{!}} The Asian American Education Project |url=https://asianamericanedu.org/racial-identity-citizenship-in-the-court.html |access-date=2024-05-06 |website=asianamericanedu.org}}</ref> Thind made the argument that he should be able to naturalize as a U.S. citizen because he was of the Cacausian race, the rhetoric that Ozawa's case upheld. Although the court agreed that Thind was Caucasian, the court also asserted that Thind was not white and that whiteness has to "be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word ‘Caucasian’ only as that word is popularly understood."<ref>{{Cite web |title=United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923) |url=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/261/204/ |access-date=2024-05-06 |website=Justia Law |language=en}}</ref>

==Effects==
On the same day, the Supreme Court released its ruling in ''[[Yamashita v. Hinkle]]'', which upheld Washington state's [[Alien land laws|alien land law]].<ref>{{ussc|name=Yamashita v. Hinkle|link=|volume=260|page=199|pin=|year=1922}}.</ref>

Within three months, Justice Sutherland authored a ruling in a Supreme Court case concerning the petition for naturalization of a [[Sikh]] immigrant from the [[Punjab region]] in [[British India]], who identified himself as "a high caste Hindu of full Indian blood" in his petition, ''[[United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind]]''. The upshot of this ruling was that, as with the Japanese, "high-caste Hindus, of full Indian blood" were not "free white persons" and were racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship. To support this conclusion, Justice Sutherland reiterated Ozawa's holding that the words "white person" in the naturalization act were "synonymous with the word 'Caucasian' only as that word is popularly understood".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Race, Nation, and Refuge|url=http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6435-race-nation-and-refuge.aspx|access-date=2021-05-11|publisher=www.sunypress.edu}}</ref>

==Reaction==
{{Expand section|date=September 2020}}
Writing in ''[[Foreign Affairs]]'' in 1923, a social scientist named [[Raymond Leslie Buell]] said, "The Japanese are now confronted with the unpalatable fact, laid down in unmistakable terms by the highest court in the land, that we consider them unfit to become Americans."<ref name="foreignpolicyBuell">{{cite magazine|last=Buell|first=Raymond Leslie|date=1923-12-15|title=Again the Yellow Peril|url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1923-12-15/again-yellow-peril|magazine=[[Foreign Affairs]]|volume=2|issn=0015-7120|number=2|url-access=subscription|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

The case allowed for anti-Japanese proponents to justify the passing of the [[Immigration Act of 1924]], which prohibited the immigration of people from Asia to the United States. Some West Coast newspapers expressed satisfaction with the Ozawa decision, though the Sacramento Bee called for a constitutional amendment “which would confine citizenship by right of birth in this country to those whose parents were themselves eligible to citizenship.”<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=1922 Seventy-five Years Ago {{!}} AMERICAN HERITAGE |url=https://www.americanheritage.com/1922-seventy-five-years-ago-3 |access-date=2021-05-01 |website=www.americanheritage.com}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 260]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* {{wikisource-inline|Ozawa v. United States|''Ozawa v. United States''}}
* {{caselaw source
 | case = ''Ozawa v. United States'', {{ussc|260|178|1922|el=no}}
 | courtlistener =https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/100055/ozawa-v-united-states/
 | findlaw = https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/260/178.html
 | googlescholar = https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=49962747195442942
 | justia =https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/260/178/
 | loc =http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep260/usrep260178/usrep260178.pdf
 | openjurist =http://openjurist.org/260/us/178
 }}
* [http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Ozawa%20v.%20United%20States/ "Ozawa v. the United States,"] ''Densho Encyclopedia'' article

{{Immigration to the United States}}
{{US14thAmendment}}

[[Category:Japanese-American history]]
[[Category:Asian-American issues]]
[[Category:United States equal protection case law]]
[[Category:United States racial discrimination case law]]
[[Category:History of immigration to the United States]]
[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases]]
[[Category:United States immigration and naturalization case law]]
[[Category:1922 in United States case law]]
[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the Taft Court]]
[[Category:Race-related case law in the United States]]